  jPodsters (counter clock-wise) Steph Song as Bree, David Kopp as Ethan Jarleswski, Emilie Ullerup as Kaitlin, Ben Ayres as Cowboy and Torrance Coombs as John Doe make up the colourful, almost cartoonish, cast of CBC's new series, jPod, based on Douglas Coupland's book of the same name.
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Stick with the quirky jPod tonight, even though the new CBC series begins with some achingly lazy writing.
There's a nerdy new boss at jPod, and he quickly demands that the five staff members make video presentations so he can get to know them better. Sure, happens every day, right?
In other words, through the course of the debut episode, we have to watch each of the five jPod employees revealing intimate details of their lives, or displaying ridiculously idiosyncratic behaviour, while a video camera rolls, merely as a clumsy device to introduce the characters to the audience.
BAD MEMORY
It reminded us of a bad and thankfully short-lived sitcom from several years ago, where the lead character sat down and went through his phone messages -- on speaker, of course -- to kick off the first episode. "Hi, it's Jimmy, YOUR BROTHER." "Hey there, this is Frank, YOUR BELEAGUERED BUSINESS MANAGER." "Hello, it's Sally, YOUR BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD SINCE CHILDHOOD." Painful.
Now, the introductory element to jPod isn't as bad as that. But still, you have to endure it to get to the good stuff.
And luckily, there is some good stuff in jPod, which is based on Douglas Coupland's best-selling book.
While watching the premiere of jPod, a couple of other good shows came to mind: Weeds and Reaper.
The Weeds comparison is not merely because jPod has a marijuana mama in the cast.
There's a similar tone, in that very comic situations are interspersed with very serious ones, although even something as serious as murder is handled in a light-hearted way.
And maybe Reaper popped into our heads because the lead actor in jPod, David Kopp, reminds us a little of Reaper's Bret Harrison.
Anyway, Kopp stars as Ethan Jarlewski, an employee at a huge video-game company in Vancouver. Because of a Y2K computer glitch that singled out employees with "J" surnames, Ethan and four "J" co-workers have been assigned to isolated basement offices; hence the term, jPod.
Ethan is surrounded by extreme characters in both the workplace and on the home front. While the four other Podsters -- played by Emilie Ullerup, Torrance Coombs, Ben Ayres and Steph Song -- are more cartoonish than lovable at first glance, we already can tell we're going to want to see far more of Ethan's parents, played by Sherry Miller and Alan Thicke.
Miller's character, Carol Jarlewski, is half normal mom and half pot-growing entrepreneur. Oh, and everyone she meets falls in love with her.
Meanwhile, Jim Jarlewski is about as far away from Thicke's paternal role on Growing Pains as he can get. Jim is an immature, boozing, aspiring movie extra who, despite his fully functional marriage, thinks he may have found "the one" when he becomes infatuated with a young blond who just happens to be one of Ethan's former classmates.
"Damn, I was hoping she'd be younger than you," Jim tells Ethan.
"Why?" an incredulous Ethan asks.
"I don't know, it's just ... it's hotter!" Jim says.
That's very funny, and you can tell Thicke loves the role.
In a wider sense, hopefully Canadian TV viewers will fall in love with jPod, too -- and not only the ones whose last names begin with "J".
BOOB TUBERTY
Attention flying aficionados, or anyone who likes to get high -- Jetstream, which debuts tonight on Discovery, provides unique access to Canada's elite jet-fighter training schools in Cold Lake, Alta. ... PBS has a compelling documentary called The Medicated Child tonight. It examines the increase in anti-psychotic drugs being prescribed to children as young as four years old, and the link to more and more kids being diagnosed with bipolar disorder ... Speaking of doctors, you can see where it all started with a repeat of the pilot episode of House tonight on Global and Fox ... The fifth season of One Tree Hill debuts tonight on CW (Sun-TV in Ontario) ... CBC has The Best of Rick Mercer tonight, with highlights from 2007.
